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Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, by Frank Esshom, was originally published in 1913 in a deluxe edition of 5,000 copies and sold to the public. The book contained 6,482 biographical summaries and photographs of civic, political and religious leaders in Utah. Many Mormon Pioneers and their famlies are included. The first section contains photographs of the men profiled. The second section lists the earliest male heads of household arranged alphabetically followed by entries for some of his male descendants. Each entry typically lists vital information, date of arrival in Utah, marriages and children, LDS church office held, occupation and other information of interest.

Accuracy of this Information

Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah did not include source documentation for the information it contained. The primary fault of the book is that it is incomplete. There were about 70,000 Mormon Pioneers while the book contains biographical information on less than 10% of that total. When using either the original or this digital reprint the information should be validated against original sources like church historical records, census, and death certificates. The Church History Libaray of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains significant collections on the Mormon Pioneers and the early history of Utah.

Some mistakes in the 1913 edition of the book are corrected in this digital re-print and are included as corrections in text boxes that look like this:

Warning

Gravestone has deathdate of 11 June 1859 while Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah has death date of 11 June 1869.

Note

Additional historical information is included in yellow “Note” sections. These notes are not part of the original 1913 book. They serve to hilight both significant and intersesting information and sometimes include information that occured after the publication of the original book.

Making Corrections:

The compiler of this digital reprint welcomes the submission of additional updated corrections. If you notice a mistake please email pioneers@pioneers.rstebbing.com and I’ll include all submitted fixes in the next update.

The original book made heavy use of abbreviations in an effort to consolidate the number of printed pages. For this 2013 digital reprint the decision was made to expand most of these abbreviations so that current readers who were unfamiliar with the original abbreviations would benefit. Responsibility for how those abbreviations were updated or expanded rests solely with the present editor Randy Stebbing. Although the following is not an exhaustive list, expansion of abbreviations like those listed below are typical of the types that were made.

Event abbreviations like b., d., and m. were expanded to born, died, and married.

Country names were expanded. For example Eng. was expanded England.

Railroad names were expanded for example R. R. was expaned to Rail Road. U. P. was expanded to Union Pacific. O. S. L. was expanded to Oregon Short Line etc.

All state names were expanded. For example abbreviations like Penn., Ga., and N. Y. were expanded to Pennsylvania, Georgia and New York.

Month names like Dec. were expanded to December.

A second major change for this 2013 digital reprint involved formatting. Again in an effort to reduce the number of printed pages the original author consolidated long lists of marriages and children into a dense block of text that makes it difficult to read. The digital reprint however puts each child on their own separate line making the information more legible.

The biographical section of the original book comprised 567 pages. In contrast this digital reformated version with its more legible format would be about 4,213 printed pages.

Original 1913 Printed Version Example:

Updated 2013 Digital Version Example:

How to Cite this Source:

Esshom, Frank; Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah; Utah Pioneers Book Publishing Company; Published 1913; Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo-reproduction of the original book available on www.archive.org. Converted to digital format by Randy Stebbing; digital version created April, 2013; Retrieved from pioneers/rstebbing.com.